Liz Warren | Storyteller

I
was fortunate enough to be a teller at a storytelling event recently.  I
invited a bunch of people to come to the event, because storytelling is so much
fun.  I invited co-workers, Toastmasters, old hiking friends, cyclists,
neighbors, everyone I could think of!  I love sharing storytelling with my
circle of friends, and it helps to see familiar faces in the audience.

A week after the
event, one of my cycling friends told me how much he had enjoyed the
event.  He had brought his granddaughter along, and although she is only eight
years old, the tellers kept her attention and he thought she enjoyed it as much
as he did.

He told me that a
few days later, his granddaughter and he sat down and began telling stories to
one another.  He told her about how the seven dwarves didn’t like living
in the big castle with Sleeping Beauty and her Prince.  The space was just
too large for their taste, so they moved on.  They ended up meeting seven girl dwarves, all of them with names
starting with the letter M.  He named all the girl dwarves for me and just beamed about how fun that was for him to make
up a story, on the fly, for his granddaughter.  And when he was done with
his story, she told him a story of her own. 

I smile, thinking of
how being a listener at a storytelling event inspired my friend and his granddaughter
to share stories later that week.  I don’t know if they’ll continue to do
that or not.  They might build a bank of wonderful memories by sharing
stories with one another from now on, or maybe it was a one-time event. 
Either way, their experience has inspired me to continue to spread the word
about storytelling, knowing that storytelling has an impact on people even if
we never know the scope of the impact exactly, and even if it impacts them only
for a little while.